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Forget What You Call It, Help Desk or Support Center, It's Customer Service

Virtual Call Center

January 09, 2011

Forget What You Call It, Help Desk or Support Center, It's Customer Service

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

“Call it what you will -- a support center, help desk, travel desk, benefits desk -- but, in the end, it’s a customer service center.”

Refreshing realism from a company in the industry. Exactly right -- whatever the method of delivery, what you’re providing is customer service. Let’s try not to forget that.

That’s according to a recent blog post on Contactual (News - Alert) OnDemand’s Web site. “It’s the place your customers -- internal or external -- come to get the help they need, whether it’s solving a problem, ordering a product, booking an airline ticket or inquiring about a benefit,” the post notes.

And as the company notes, “integrating your CRM with your call center app is truly the missing link in providing a 360-degree view of your customers to your call center agents. That missing link now exists in the form of the cloud computing applications.”

Frankly this isn’t such a startling statement, what’s truly startling is that there are companies out there today who have CRM, who have a call center -- and the two aren’t connected.

“What does that mean for your call center? It means CRM is a strategic asset, one that agents can tap into to quickly resolve customers’ issues and reduce handling times,” the post says. “It means automated processes can now be used to lower costs and ensure consistent customer service is delivered across every touch point with which the customer comes in contact.”

Yes, all benefits of a smoothly-integrated CRM and call center setup. Again, it’s a head-scratcher that companies with the capability for this don’t do it since, as the post correctly points out, “it means your agents have valuable insights into your customers’ history in real-time. Your agents can instantly identify your most-profitable customers; they can access tools that help them reduce inefficiencies; solve problems quicker and most importantly improve service levels.”

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.